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Girly Geek Of The Week: Jennifer Lee

Meet this week’s #GGOTW Jennifer Lee! She is just a power house #AwesomeAdmin #RockStar!! From taking a risk leaving a long time job for a Salesforce Career – to killing it on Trailhead – to being a longtime volunteer helping inner city youth, this woman ROCKS!!!

Me: How & when did you start working with Salesforce?

Jennifer: Four years ago, I was introduced to Salesforce as a project manager of $3M+ 3-year project to create the CRM roadmap for our asset management business and deliver three projects: improving the accuracy of territory assignment to 99%, providing the ability to assign a unique identifier to each Salesforce contact as a way to tie sales from the sales reporting system to the advisor in Salesforce and implementing a new Salesforce org/migration of information from previous shared org. Post deployment, my team provided technology support/project management/business analysis/release management for production support enhancements.

I was hooked…Salesforce was only part of my job responsibilities and I wanted it to be full time. I made the hard decision of leaving my employer of 17 years to pursue a job working with Salesforce full time. I celebrated my one year anniversary this past September. Good for you taking a risk and succeeding! You can not go wrong with a Salesforce career! ❤

Me: What is your current role working with Salesforce?

Jennifer: I am currently a Salesforce Business Consultant at John Hancock in the Salesforce Shared Services team in Technology. I’m an advocate for Salesforce. I participate in various Salesforce projects to ensure project teams are adhering to our standards, adhering to our mantra of using standard Salesforce functions to the extent possible than developing code. I perform various configuration tasks in Salesforce: anything security related, org wide changes, process builder and visual workflow automation solutions.

Our team supports three Salesforce organizations, using Sales and Service Cloud with about 1,300 total users across the three orgs. As the senior Salesforce expert on my team, I developed the Salesforce governance standards used by administrators and developers working in our Salesforce orgs. I am also responsible for reviews of and implementation of Salesforce security related features/enhancements and design reviews of production support enhancements.

I also mentor the newer administrators on our team. You are a #RockStar and #AwesomeAdmin! I love it! 🙂

Me: What is your favorite thing to do in Salesforce and why?

Jennifer: Just one, I have three…

I absolutely LOVE that there is so much a Salesforce administrator can do declaratively in Salesforce without having to write a lick of code. It gives me a great sense of accomplishment to be able to solve a use case all on my own without help from someone else (i.e. developer). The introduction of Process Builder and the use of visual workflow starts moving the work that we were heavily dependent on developers to deliver into the hands of the administrators.

I also LOVE the Salesforce community. You reach out with a question or an issue and there are several people willing to assist. I’m trying to pay it forward by assisting others out in the community in return whether it’s through the success community, Twitter, LinkedIn, my blog, etc. I recently volunteered for the Ask the Expert booth at the NYC Salesforce World Tour. I had a blast answering questions from new users of Salesforce and new administrators who just found out they have to support Salesforce. Dreamforce 15 was the best one ever where I had the opportunity to meet some of my virtual Salesforce community in person.

I can’t forget to mention my love for Trailhead. I may be the only female or one of the very few females with all 72 modules (would need to be confirmed withChris Duarte). I wish Trailhead existed 4 years ago when I first met Salesforce. It is truly a phenomenal learning tool. After I finished the beginner and intermediate admin trails, I was very weary about trying the developer trails, since I am not a developer. But there was this drive in me that I had to have all the badges, I persisted onward. Sure, I ran into roadblocks here and there but the Trailhead Forum helped me through it. I do also want to credit Mohith Shrivastava and Adam Olshanskyfor helping me through the mobile SDK trail modules – my 48th and 66th badges (obtained on 9/20).

Here’s an indication of how deep I’m in as a Trailhead addict. Salesforce releases 18 badges right before DF15 and I had to complete them all before leaving for it or I would be obsessing about the badges during DF15.

Me: What are some of your aspirations and/or goals when it comes to Salesforce?

Jennifer: I have many! I would like to become more involved in the Salesforce community (success community, BUG, FinServUG, etc), continue to grow my knowledge of Salesforce, earn more Trailhead badges, present at a Salesforce World Tour and/or Dreamforce, obtain two more certifications…and to become a Salesforce MVP one day.

Love the Blog post by Francis! And I wish you the best of luck with becoming an MVP – you definitely deserve it!

Me: Do you have any advice for women working with Salesforce?

Jennifer: Don’t be afraid to pursue what you are passionate about, even if it means leaving something you are familiar with and are going out of your comfort zone. Don’t let things hold you back from following your dreams. Yes, it might be scary, but I guarantee you that you will be happy you did it. No regrets! Agree 100% 🙂

Me: What kinds of things are you involved in, and/or do you like to do outside of the Salesforce world?

Jennifer: When it’s warmer out, I love walking around the city of Boston with my Pomeranian Addison. ❤

For 10+ years, I volunteer several hours each week at Ellis Memorial’s pre-school class of 2- and 3-year olds. Ellis Memorial works with Boston’s inner city working families to provide high quality education and care for children, youth and vulnerable adults. ❤

I also like to spend time with my family and my two adorable ~2 yr old nephews. ❤

Me: Are you part of a Girly Geeks Chapter?

Jennifer: I am a member of WiT and the new WiT – Diversity group.

I’ve joined the Boston WiT a few months ago but haven’t yet attended a meeting (logistics issue: meetings are in the suburbs, living in the city, I don’t own a car). And of course you can be a part of that group via the Success Community as well, so for any other WIT’s who cant make meetings, keep that in mind!

It was a pleasure getting to know you Jennifer and thank you very much for sharing!